An era has ended in Turkey’s Armenian press and literature: Rober Haddeciyan has passed away
ISTANBUL, Turkey—Rober Haddeciyan, editor-in-chief and chief writer of Marmara newspaper, passed away on the morning of September 6, 2025. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday three months later, in January 2026.
Haddeciyan, who headed Marmara since 1967, was also a novelist and short story writer who published extensively in Armenian.
Born on January 26, 1926, in Bakırköy, Istanbul, Haddeciyan moved with his family to Kurtuluş, when he enrolled in the Pangaltı Mekhitaryan Armenian School through high school. After graduating in 1944, he attended the physics and mathematics department of Istanbul University for one year before transferring to the philosophy and psychology department of the Faculty of Letters, graduating in 1950. After completing his military service as a reserve officer in Ankara and Ağrı, he married Süzan Tamikyan and began his career as a representative for a large textile company.
Haddeciyan’s literary talents were evident early. In 1946, he submitted his story “Paraskhal” (Word Mistake) to the monthly magazine Aniv (Wheel), with the encouragement of his teachers. From that point on, he devoted himself entirely to Armenian literature, working alongside Zahrad, Zareh Khrakhuni and Varujan Acemyan to produce the literary pages of the Armenian-language daily newspaper Marmara.
Marmara was founded in 1940 by Suren Şamlıyan, When Haddeciyan assumed full responsibility in 1967, the paper was being managed by Şamlıyan’s daughter and son-in-law, Seta and Bedros Zobyan. Marmara made significant progress with the switch to offset printing in 1976.
Among Haddeciyan’s most important works was Arasdağı [Ceiling], published in 1983. His book, Vasdağ [Earning], was awarded the first prize of the Alek Manukyan Foundation Literature Fund in 1976, while Arasdağı won the same award in 1983. Thanks to the scholarship of literary critic Suren Tanielyan, Haddeciyan’s work also gained wide recognition in Armenia.
In 2001, he was accepted as a member of the Armenian Journalists Union. Over his lifetime, he received numerous honors, including the Gold Medal of the Armenian Ministry of Culture, the Movses Khorenatsi Medal of the Armenian State, the Yerevan State University Gold Medal, the Golden Pen Award of the Armenian Journalists Union, the S. Mesrob Mashtots Award and the Surp Sahak-Surp Mesrob Medal.
Haddeciyan lost his wife, Suzan, in 2024. His sons Ari and Ayk Haddeciyan have recently been running the newspaper.
A national funeral ceremony will be held on Wednesday, September 10 at 1:00 p.m. at the Üç Horan (Three Horan) Armenian Church in Beyoğlu.
Marmara included the following in its report on his passing:
“It was an indispensable witness to the years when our society still spoke Armenian and the Armenian press was proudly read in homes. Marmara had thousands of readers; for them, the newspaper was bread and Rober Haddeciyan’s writings were a sacred trust. Our promise is to remain faithful to the values you defend with unwavering faith. May your heavenly journey be illuminated with light.”
This article was originally published in Agos on September 6.
The reason why the sales and number of prints of Marmara and also of Jamanak, (which are the last remaining Armenian-language newspapers in Turkey, which used to have many more Armenian-language newspapers and magazines in the past) have declined so much over the past decades, is because of the steady and accelarating decline of the Armenian community of Istanbul, but also due to the language shift from Armenian to Turkish among them. That is why, the readership has largely shifted to the Turkish-language Armenian weekly newspaper Agos, which only has a few pages in Armenian, and which is also struggling in sales, because of the small number of readership, again because of the small size of the Armenian community.
Even though the Armenian community of Istanbul has its own schools and kindergartens, the curriculum is the Turkish national curriculum and except for Armenian language and religion classes, all the other lessons are generally held in Turkish – and history lesson is of course the official Turkish version. When I visited Istanbul back in April 2005, including an Armenian school, an Armenian cultural event and an Armenian church service, I was struck how dominant Turkish is in the Armenian community and I was told that it has become the first language of the large majority of them. Most of the speeches and conversations were held in Turkish. The loss of Western Armenian is not only a serious problem in the United States, France or Argentina, but is seriously endangered in Turkey as well, because of the language shift. I also learned that many Istanbul Armenians marry Turks, which is the other reason for their assimilation, as most of the Armenian spouses don’t pass on the Armenian language, names and Christianity to their children. Except for the Armenian community of Lebanon, where Armenian is thriving, it looks like that Western Armenian is becoming moribund, if not extinct in the Armenian Diaspora.
This is not only a problem in the diaspora of Turkey, but in the United States also.
Kind of like what is happening to the Armenian Weekly, now that it is out of print and online only.
The younger generation is schooled in English, even with local Armenian Schools, the English language is the
native tongue, as is Turkish in Turkey.